In October 2005, China Network Communication Group Company ("China Netcom") declared in Beijing that Huawei will construct the core part of the nationwide IP bearer network for China Netcom. This project involves the products such as Quidway® NetEngine 5000E (NE5000E), Quidway® NetEngine 80E (NE80E) core router, S8500 series high-end switch and firewall, and covers multiple provinces and prefectures in China. The initiation of this project symbolizes the establishment of the new-generation telecommunications service platform of China Netcom, which is primarily used for bearing the high-value services such as Next Generation Network (NGN), VPN, IPTV and the coming 3G.

Background Overview

With rapid development of information technology and popularization of the Internet, people require broadband, individualized and integrated communication services. In order to meet the diversified requirements, it is important and urgent now for the carriers to provide NGN which carries multimedia integrated services. As one of the mainstream carriers in China, China Netcom operates the nationwide Internet, and is a permanent communication service partner for the Beijing Olympic Games 2008. With the launch of new services such as NGN, 3G and VPN, the existing broadband networks expose more and more problems in terms of Quality of Service (QoS), reliability and multicast, and can hardly meet the future development requirements.

Specific to the current status of the bearer network, China Netcom needs to build a core bearer network oriented to the NGN long-distince network and future 3G services. As boosted by the new market competition environment, new service development and new technology, this new bearer network will become a next-generation multi-service core bearer platform which supports voice, data and video concurrently. It will carry the services such as NGN, videoconference, videophone, stream media, enterprise interconnection and 3G, and will be a key step for China Netcom to perform network convergence and network transformation.

For purpose of this project, China Netcom stages comprehensive touch and exchange with multiple equipment suppliers, and performed an all-round test for multiple brands of products in October 2004. Huawei was highly accepted by Netcom as builder of this project by virtue of its experience in traditional telecom network, NGN, VPN and IPTV and excellent product test.

Solution

The phase-1 project of China Netcom IP bearer network will build core nodes in multiple prefectures and provincial capitals, and edge nodes in important cities such as Shenzhen and Dalian. Multiple pieces of NE5000E are used as core equipment of the prefecture, dozens of NE80E are used as convergent equipment, and plenty of S8500 serial high-end switches and firewalls will be used.

Specific to current status and planning of China Netcom, after careful study and analysis and repeated exchanges with China Netcom, Huawei puts forward a complete solution. The topology view is shown below:


Farsightedness – High Starting Point

The NGN has a special service model, a star signaling traffic model and a mesh media traffic model. Those characteristics should be considered sufficiently when selecting the equipment model. Huawei keeps attention to the change of router required by network services, deploys massive R&D force on an ongoing basis, and launches the NE5000E and NE80E core router consecutively. These two routers complement each other in the network to develop a completely structured and articulately layered solution. It is the ideal choice of next-generation Internet.

The NE5000E/NE80E is based on the distributed hardware forwarding and blocking-free switching technology. It provides high-capacity switching network, powerful packet forwarding capability, and high-density 10G interface. Under complicated services, it can keep wire-speed forwarding and can be upgraded to 40G ports in the future. The NE80E adopts high-performance network processing technology. It is based on the programmable feature of network processor and can provide high-density network interfaces, abundant service features and perfect software functions. The NE5000E also supports multi-chassis cascading. It can be expanded to provide higher performance and more services. In addition, its hardware supports IPv6, and can implements smooth upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6. It is widely applied in the China Next Generation Internet (CNGI).

Based on such high-performance network equipment, China Netcom IP bearer network owns a high-performance fundamental network. It can provide perfect functions and high expansibility, which lays a strong foundation for carrying multi-service in the future.

Planning for the Future – Low Risk

Network stability and reliability are guarantee of normal operation of network services. The Huawei high-end equipment applied in this project consists of the components which are fully hot-swappable. The key components such as main processing board, switching fabric network and power supply work in a redundant way. Even if the equipment becomes faulty, the NSF/GR technology will ensure uninterrupted forwarding of services, thus ensuring reliability of equipment. In terms of network reliability, by deploying the reliability technologies uniformly such as IGP fast convergence, BFD, Enhanced VRRP, TE FRR, IP FRR and VPN FRR, the equipment implements 50ms fail-over, which makes the network availability reach 99.999% and meets the carrier-class service requirements.

Network security is another important topic of the bearer network. The security of the bearer network relies on special security strategy devices (e.g., firewall, IDS) deployed at different locations of the bearer network, and requires the robustness of network devices which make up the bearer network. Various MPLS VPNs need to be supported to implement flexible, secure and efficient isolation of various services. The high-end devices such as NE5000E, NE80E and S8500 series applied in this project keep high processing capabilities after starting the security measures such as ACL, provide the widest support for the MPLS VPN, and ensure that security and reliability of services transmitted in the IP bearer network.

For the services carried on the IP bearer network of China Netcom, Huawei can provide high-quality end-to-end QoS assurance based on DiffServ and MPLS TE tunnel, implement intelligent service perception, powerful bidirectional stream classification rules, advanced queue dispatch algorithm, congestion control algorithm, and ensure the broadband, delay and jitters of different services to meet the QoS requirements of different users and different service grades.
High reliability, high security and high QoS assurance reduce the network risks, add vigor to the IP bearer network of China Netcom, and ensure steady deployment of the services such as NGN, VPN and IPTV.

Frugality – Low Cost

The ARPU value of communication across the globe is decreasing on the whole, and each telecom carrier feels unprecedented pressure. Frugality seems compulsory. The operator expects the equipment supplier to decrease the CAPEX and OPEX of the network construction while providing high-quality products and solutions.

Specific to fast growth and change of future telecom services, Huawei provides the products and solutions in this project to meet the service bearing requirements of China Netcom in a long period to come, support smooth expansion and upgrade of products and services, minimize adjustment of the existing network structure and equipment and protect the user investment maximally.

Network management is much influential to OPEX. Huawei can provide a perfect Network Management System (NMS), including DMS data communication management system, and D2610 network traffic analysis system. The NMS implements centralized monitoring and right-based management for the network, performs configuration, monitoring and management for the equipment, ports and network topology, and provides the Netstream traffic analysis function, which makes statistics and analysis for network traffic and helps the carrier plan, and optimize the network. More importantly, Huawei provides various service management systems such as VPN Manager and QoS Manager, performs unified planning and management for the services such as VPN in the whole network, and implements elaborate operation for the network.

In order to understand the requirements of the customer, Huawei provides all-round services oriented to R&D, product, marketing, project construction and technical services. Huawei sets up 8 regional divisions and 85 representative offices and technical service centers across the globe, thus developing a 3-level customer service system ranging from the headquarters to the regional division and representative office. Huawei sets up the biggest service network in China, including 30 regional offices, thus developing a service platform that covers more than 300 local networks in China. The perfect aftersales service system can respond to the customer requirements at the earliest possible time, and provide high assurance for the IP bearer network construction of China Netcom.

Cooperation Prospect

The phase-1 project of the nationwide IP bearer network of China Netcom is shaping up. Currently, the network is operating well, and various telecom services are developing smoothly, which lays a favorable foundation for further cooperation between both parties. The C3 extension project of IP bearer network of China Netcom is initiated in 2006. Through one year of exchange and verification, China Netcom and Huawei join hands again to construct the C3 extension project of IP bearer network of China Netcom. The IP bearer network after completion will be a national elaborate network to be developed strongly by China Netcom in the future. It is the widest covering NGN/3G bearer network in the world now.

Facing the transformation of "telecom network becoming IP, and IP network becoming telecom", Huawei will join hands with China Netcom to build a better future!